Beggar’s Choice (17 page)

“Yes,” said Isobel, still with that warmth in her voice.

“How do you mean ‘Yes'?”

“I think he was quite right—I think you ought to know.”

“Oh, you do, do you? And what am I to believe? He says Car's down and out, and you say he's flourishing around dining and dancing at one of the most expensive places in London. What am I to believe?”

“I think his employer sent him there,” said Isobel.

“Then he's got a job—what? Why didn't you tell me that at once?”

“Because that's all I know. He just told me that—he didn't tell me anything else.”

“H'm!” said Mr. Carthew. “Well, he's coming to stay with you, isn't he, and I can ask him about it myself. Sounds fishy to me—very fishy. But I can ask him about it when he comes.”

“He isn't coming,” said Isobel in a low voice. It was as bitter to say it as if all those tears had not washed her clear of feeling.

“Not coming?” said Mr. Carthew sharply. “How do you mean ‘not coming'? Your Aunt Willy told me herself she'd asked him down. A couple of days ago she told me she was going to ask him, and yesterday she told me she'd done it.”

“Yes,” said Isobel. “He isn't coming.” Why did people make you say things that hurt so frightfully?

“Nonsense!” said Mr. Carthew very loudly. “If she asked him to come, he'd be bound to jump at the chance.”

“Why?” said Isobel.

All at once she felt that she knew why Car wouldn't come. How could he come to his uncle's very door as if he were begging to be taken back? He couldn't—of course he couldn't. The relief was so great that it brought a mist to her eyes, and a lovely changing color to her cheek.

“Why?” said Mr. Carthew—“why? Because a lady's good enough to ask him. That's reason enough, isn't it?—or it would have been when I was a young fellow. I suppose it's no reason at all now that manners have gone out of fashion, and family feeling, and religion, and all the things that used to be expected of a man with a stake in the country. Dancing and enjoying themselves—that's all the present generation cares for!”

Isobel's heart gave a little leap. “He's disappointed. He cares. He wants to see Car again and make it up. He's angry because he's disappointed.” Aloud she said:

“Why don't you ask him to come? He'd come if you asked him.”

She was rather frightened as soon as she had said it. Suppose she had made him angry—he got angry rather easily. She might just have given him a push in the wrong direction.

His eyebrows were very bushy indeed. First he stared at her, and then he said explosively,

“I'm to ask him, am I—what? Go down on my knees to him and ask him to come back? Is that your idea, or it is his—what? Did he put you up to it?”

Isobel wasn't sure whether she would be telling the truth if she said “No.” Car had certainly said “He'll have to tell me so,” when she had declared that his uncle wanted to make it up. She blushed and said,

“Quarrels are such miserable things. Why shouldn't you ask him to come back? It—it would be so lovely if we could all be friends again”

“H'm!” said Mr. Carthew. “Did he tell you to say that?”

“No—of course he didn't. You know he's proud—you said so yourself. If he'd been doing well and making money, he'd have asked you to be friends again long ago—but he's been awfully, awfully poor. Don't you see he simply couldn't come back when it would look as if he were asking you to do something for him?”

Mr. Carthew planted his stick firmly behind him, put both hands on the crook, and leaned back against it.

“God bless my soul!” he said; and then, “You make him out a very fine, disinterested fellow, don't you, my dear—eh? Most young fellows wouldn't think so much about coming and asking an uncle to give them a helping hand. It's his damned pride and obstinacy, I tell you. I wanted him to marry and settle down, and he wouldn't—told me he'd no fancy for it. I've no patience with these young men of the present day—they've no sense of their obligations, no sense of responsibility. When a man's got a property coming to him, it's his duty to marry young. I married when I was twenty-three, and if I haven't got a son of my own, it's all the more reason why I should want to see Car's children—isn't it? Only, as I say, he set himself up against me, and the last thing he said to me—shall I tell you the last thing he said to me?”

“No, don't,” said Isobel. “You ought to forget it. I expect you were both angry. Nobody means what they say when they're angry—you know they don't.”

Mr. Carthew stood bolt upright and brandished his stick in the air.

“He said, ‘I don't care if I don't ever see you again, and Linwood may go to——' Well, I was brought up to consider a lady's ears—so we'll call it Jericho.”

Isobel looked at him with a sparkling challenge in her eyes. “And what had you just been saying to him?”

“God bless my soul, I forget.”

“Then don't you think you'd better forget what he said too?”

“H'm!” said Mr. Carthew. He turned abruptly and began to walk away. “I shall be late for lunch,” he said, “Anna don't like my being late for lunch.”

XXII

Mr. Bobby Markham opened the door of the hut on Linwood Edge. A complete and dense blackness confronted him.

The battery of his electric torch had given out, and at eleven o'clock on a moonless, starless night it had been dark enough coming here through the woods, but even to eyes grown accustomed to this darkness the inside of the hut presented an opaque and discouraging gloom.

Bobby Markham didn't really like the dark very much. He found it afflicting to be asked to meet Anna at midnight in a lonely wood, and it may be said at once that for no other human being would he have come. He had hoped that she would have been here already. Comforting thoughts of finding the hut pleasantly lit up had sustained him. He opened the door, and the place was as black as the pit.

Yet when he had advanced a step, and was wishing, not for the first time, that he had a box of matches on him, he thought that he heard something move. He stood still instantly, quite still, listening. Something ever so slightly stirred in the black silence. A most unpleasant damp, pringling feeling spread rapidly from the top of his head to the tips of his fingers and toes. He grasped the defunct torch. But, in his inmost mind, the thing that he was afraid of was not a thing that could be bashed on the head or struck down by a damp, heavy fist. The very ancient menace of the terror that walks in darkness stirred, here, close at his side.

He stiffened, tried to draw breath, and felt the clammy air of the place stick in his throat. With paralyzing suddenness a round disk of brilliant light broke the dark. A beam sprang from it and just touched his face and his blinded, staring eyes. Then the torch dropped, and Anna's voice said,

“You're late.”

He got hold of the table and stood there shaking. How beastly—how
beastly!
His heart was thudding. He felt for the chair and sat down.

Anna switched off the torch.

“We can talk in the dark,” she said.

“Where's the lantern?”—he managed to say that.

“It's here. But we don't want it—there's always a chance of its attracting attention.”

He persisted.

“Light it. I can't talk in the dark.”

He heard the spurt of a match and saw, with a most extraordinary relief, the yellow tongue of flame, the match, the outline of the lantern with the white guttered candle inside it. The flame caught the wick, and he could see the four walls of the hut, and Anna drawing back her hand and blowing out the match. She was bare-headed, with long shining diamond earrings that made rainbows of the light, and a black Chinese shawl wrapping her from shoulder to ankle. It was worked all over with small silken flowers bright as jewels. Her bare arm emerged from the long black fringe that edged it.

In the light, Bobby was himself again at once—heavily good-natured and very much Anna Lang's adoring slave.

“Come—that's better!” he said.

“Is it?”

“Well, I like to look at you, you know. You look ripping in that shawl thing.”

With the movement that she made it slipped a little, showing the curve of her shoulder very white against the black.

“You mustn't pay me compliments,” she said. “That's not what I asked you to come here for.”

Car Fairfax would have been moved to inward mirth by the sad dignity of her tone. Bobby Markham admired it very much; it made him feel that he must be on his very best behavior. When Anna looked away for a moment, he got out a silk handkerchief and dried his forehead, which was unbecomingly damp and shiny. Like most fat men he was exceedingly vain. He put the handkerchief away quickly as Anna turned back again.

“I asked you to meet me because there's something I want you to do for me,” she said.

“Anything little Bobby can do,” said Mr. Markham with an air of effusive sentiment which sat oddly on him. “As you know——”

She cut him short with a wave of the hand which he thought very graceful.

“Wait till you hear what it is.”

“I wouldn't mind what it was as long as it pleased you.”

Anna rested her chin upon her hand.

“I wonder whether you really mean that.”

“Why, of course I do.” Then, with a touch of caution, “That is, if it's anything I
can
do.”

“It is something that you can do if you will.”

He looked at her with a little sense of discomfort. There wasn't any one like Anna, and he was devoted to her; but he did sometimes wish that she could be just what she was, beautiful, romantic, exciting, and yet at the same time a little more comfortable. He would have liked to be talking to her by a decent, civilized fireside for instance; and if there was anything she wanted him to do, he would like her to tell him straight out, and not sit looking at him in that dark, mysterious, hinting sort of way.

“Well, little Bobby's willing,” he said.

Anna leaned forward and whispered in his ear, and immediately the smoldering discomfort which had made him think yearningly of drawing-rooms and restaurants burst into a flame of apprehension. He drew back, got out his handkerchief again, used it this time under Anna's sustained gaze, and stammered,

“What for?”

“That's my affair,” said Anna calmly.

“Not much it isn't—not when you want me to get it for you. Look here, Anna—for heaven's sake don't tell me you've started taking the damned stuff!”

The lantern-light shone on her pale composure.

“Would it be your affair if I had?”

She admired the tragic depth of her own voice. Car would have known that she was admiring it—that was why she hated him—but Bobby could be counted upon to be a fellow-admirer. He broke out into protest;

“For heaven's sake don't say such a thing! I'd go crazy! Of course it's my affair—everything that's got anything to do with you is my affair.”

She shook her head slightly, and the diamonds swung at her ears.

“It's not for myself. Will you get it for me?”

Mr. Markham mopped his brow again. The palms of his hands were wet. He was wishing with great intensity that he had always kept on the humdrum side of the law.

“It's so damned dangerous,” he said in a voice that was really like a groan. Then, as she looked scornfully at him, “I wish ten thousand times I'd never had anything to do with it.”

“Yes,” said Anna “—now that you've made your money out of it—I can understand that.”

“I'm clearing out. I've told him so—I've told him I won't go on—and he said”—his voice dropped—“he's getting out of it himself. And a good job too—that's what I say. It's dangerous—it's a lot too dangerous. He said so—he said the police were sitting up and taking notice—he said they were out for blood, and he'd be hanged if he was going to let 'em have his.” The sound of Mr. Markham's own voice had heartened him a good deal. He smiled a wide smile which showed a golden tooth upon either side, and concluded, “And little Bobby's just as keen on their not getting him.”

“You're afraid,” said Anna.

Mr. Markham acknowledged the compliment.

“Any one who wasn't a fool would be afraid. It'd mean a dashed long sentence. It's me for the shore before the ship goes down. And you take my advice——”

“I haven't asked for your advice—I've asked for your help. And if you won't give it——” She paused for a second—“then—
then
I'll go to some one who will.”

She pushed back her chair and rose. The shawl fell back and showed her in diaphanous black, neck, shoulders and back all gleaming bare and white.

Mr. Markham leaned across the table.

“What a dashed hurry you're in! Look here, Anna—what do you want it for? I've got to know—
he'll
want to know.”

“He's
not
to know. If I wanted him to know, I could ask him for it myself. You've got to get it for me without his knowing.”

“Why do you want it? I can't get it like that. But if I could, I wouldn't—not without knowing what you want it for. It's too infernally dangerous.”

She was gathering her shawl up slowly with one hand. The little bright flowers seemed to bloom as she moved them.

“It won't be dangerous at all. It—” She hesitated. “It—might be the very opposite.”

“How do you mean—the very opposite?”

“I mean—you said they're out for some one's blood. Well, if they caught some one with the stuff on them——” She stopped, biting her lip, a dark colour in her cheek, her eyes brilliant and watchful.

Bobby Markham stared at her. He was wishing that he had never come.